Officials Face Off on European Flu Vaccine

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From the sunny south to the chilly north, lines of those waiting outside clinics for flu shots may be slightly shorter this weekend because of the mathematical reality: There still is not enough vaccine for everyone, not even for those most vulnerable to the flu.

“It’s a disgrace,” says an elderly woman, 177th in line outside the Chelsea Clinic in New York City.

This week in Congress, there will be a hearing on the shortage with testimony from the head of the Food and Drug Administration. But the hearing is unlikely to produce more vaccine.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases at the National Institutes of Health says that so far flu vaccine doses in the United States number 61,000,000 out of an expected demand for 100,000,000 doses.

The shortfall is the result, in part, of contamination at a Chiron factory in Britain, which shut down production. Chiron is one of two main suppliers to the U.S. — a fact, says Fauci, “which has put us in the difficult position of having to face a flu season with about one half of the doses we expected.”

Imports From Europe?

In Illinois, that prospect has alarmed Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

“Senior citizens in hospitals, men and women with suppressed immune systems, men and women suffering from cancer, are at great risk because of the shortage of flu vaccine,” he says. “More than 150,000 people here in Illinois were put at great risk.”

So Gov. Blagojevich is spearheading an effort to import flu vaccine directly from Europe. It is an offshoot of an Illinois program to import other medicine at a lower price than the same medicine would cost in the United States.

“We were lucky enough to have a built in infrastructure already in place,” he says.

Illinois has purchased 300,000 doses and the program will also provide 150,000 doses for New Mexico and 200,000 for New York City at $10.00 a dose. And American Airlines says it is ready to fly the vaccine, free, to the United States.

There’s only one catch: The FDA hasn’t approved the plan. It first wants to inspect the factories in Germany and France and evaluate the vaccine, which is produced by pharmaceutical giants Aventis and GlaxoSmithKline, which already sell vaccine in the U.S.

That’s frustrating officials in the two states and New York City.

“The vaccine is exactly the same vaccine,” says New York City health Commissioner Thomas Friedman. “It has the same three strains of flu to vaccinate against.”

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